3. Classifications of law

International and municipal law

International law: Law that operates between states, or, in its private branch, that deals with a case because a foreign element is in it. It is not "law outside Sierra Leone" in the vague sense of foreign criminal codes.

Public international law: The law between states. Its main materials are treaties and practice that has hardened into custom. Disputes may go to the International Court of Justice at The Hague, or to arbitration. A national court does not enforce that law in the same way it enforces an Act, unless the constitution or an Act has brought the treaty into domestic law.

Private international law: Also called the conflict of laws. It decides which country's law applies, and which court is competent, when the parties or the facts are not all from one system. Much of it is common law. Some of it is now in statutes and treaties. It is still municipal law. It is the local court's set of rules for a foreign element. It is not a single world code.

Municipal or domestic law: Law that operates inside one country. Sierra Leone's Constitution, Acts and customary law are municipal law.

Public and private law

Public law: Law about the state. It governs the state and the person. Constitutional law, administrative law and criminal law sit here. The state is a party, or the structure of the state is the subject.

Private law: Rights and duties between persons. The state's part is to provide a civilised way to resolve the dispute. The aggrieved person starts the case. Lectures sometimes say private law "is called civil law". That is a useful shorthand and a dangerous one. Civil law is also the name of the Roman-law tradition, as opposed to the common law, and it is the name of the non-criminal side of a common-law system. In an answer, say private law concerns persons, and that the court proceedings are civil.

Criminal and civil

Criminal law: Wrongs treated as offences against the state: murder, robbery, mutiny, riot, dangerous driving, and the rest of the criminal calendar. The state prosecutes.

Civil law, in this pair: Wrongs and claims between persons, such as breach of contract or unlawful dismissal. The person who says they were wronged sues.

The next chapter takes the differences of purpose, proof and remedy. Do not repeat them here unless the question asks for both the classification and the differences.

Substance and procedure

Substantive law: The rights and duties themselves. A contract exists. A crime is defined. A person owns the land.

Procedural or adjectival law: The steps by which a right is proved and enforced, including the rules of evidence in civil and criminal courts. A good claim can still fail if the procedure is ignored. Procedure does not, by itself, create the right.

Classification by subject

Why teachers do this: The pairs above are structural. Faculties also divide law by the job it does. The labels below are the ones the LLB uses. Each has its own notes on Lanbuk. This list is a map, not a full account.

Contract: Agreements between persons with capacity, which the courts enforce when they were meant to bind, are not illegal or contrary to public policy, and are not undone by a fundamental mistake. Those three are not the whole of formation. Offer, acceptance and consideration still have to be there.

Tort: Civil wrongs causing injury, damage or loss. The usual remedy is damages. Negligence, failure to control a dangerous thing or animal, and defamation are examples, not a closed list.

Property: Ownership, use and transfer. Real property is land and what is treated as part of land. Personal property is movable: goods, animals, vehicles, money. A lease is, for historical reasons, personalty even though it concerns land. The wide description of land in the lecture, covering mines, buildings and other corporeal hereditaments, tracks the wide English definition. Sierra Leone land law has its own tenure. Use the land-law notes for that.

Family: Birth, death, burial, marriage, nullity, divorce, children and marital property. Sierra Leone runs three systems: general law, customary law and Muslim law. Most family questions are statute plus the system that applies to the parties, not "common law" alone.

Commercial and mercantile law: The lecture uses both names. Commercial law is the law of business: companies, partnerships, agency, sale of goods. Mercantile law is the customs and practice of local and international commerce: contracts, banks, insurance, carriage, intellectual property and related transactions. It is not a separate legal system. It is a grouping. Sale of goods and company law are mostly statute. Bailment, which sits in the mercantile notes, is mostly common law.

Constitutional law: The powers of the main organs of government and the relations between them. In Sierra Leone most of the structure is in the 1991 Constitution.

Criminal law, again: Listed twice in some lectures because it is both a public-law category and a teaching subject.

Administrative law: The limits on the powers of state agencies, and the control of how those powers are used.

Revenue law: What the state may require people to pay. Direct and indirect taxation.

Planning law: Control of the use of land, sharpest where people live and work close together.

Land law: Rights to use land, to alienate it, and to exclude others.

Evidence: What may be put before a court. Relevance, admissibility, reliability, and which witnesses can be compelled.

International trade law: Rules for trade between markets. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is a treaty on trade in goods and is now part of the World Trade Organization system. It is public international law applied to trade, not a Sierra Leone sale-of-goods Act.

International criminal law: The part of public international law that makes individuals responsible for international crimes. The core crimes are genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. Piracy and torture are sometimes added, depending on the definition used. Sierra Leone's own experience is the Special Court for Sierra Leone, set up by agreement between Sierra Leone and the United Nations to try persons bearing the greatest responsibility for crimes in the civil war. Do not treat that court as an ordinary domestic criminal court.

International human rights law: Treaties and customary international law that bind states to respect rights, enforced at home, in a region, or internationally. Sierra Leone's domestic statement is Chapter III. Regional obligations, including under the African Charter, are an extra layer. A treaty is not, by itself, a section of an Act.

Environmental law: The network of treaties, statutes, regulations and custom that addresses what people do to the natural environment: pollution, waste, and protection of species and places. The lecture's example of "federal parkland" is not a Sierra Leone institution. Use Sierra Leone's own environmental statutes when the question is local.

Equity and trusts: Equity, from the Court of Chancery, supplements the common law. A trust is an equitable obligation. A trustee holds property for beneficiaries, or for a purpose that equity allows, including charity.

Banking and finance: The rules on banks, markets, securities and the transactions around them, including the public duties of financial institutions. A loan, and the security for it, are dealt with in the mercantile notes on commercial credit.

How to classify a problem

Use one cut at a time: First ask whether the state is prosecuting or a person is suing. That is criminal or civil. Then ask whether the claim is about a right (substance) or about a step in court (procedure). Then name the subject. A road crash can be a crime and a tort. Say so. Do not force it into one box.